Date:         Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:01:17 -0800
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Sender:       Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
              <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Eric Jacobs <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: Suggestions needed re: crashed disk drive recovery
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Hello Richard,

If the "crash" was induced by HDD data corruption (ie. the
index/TOC), and is in a PC format like FAT or NTFS, I have
had very good success with GetDataBack:

http://www.runtime.org/

If the crash is due to a mechanical failure of the head or
drive mechanism, then indeed, you are looking at $3,000 - if
they can get anything at all.

If the HDD is formatted for use with the Mac OS or some
other flavor of UNIX, I'm not sure what the appropriate tool
would be for repairing the index/TOC (if that's the problem).


Eric Jacobs

The Audio Archive, Inc.
tel: 408.221.2128
fax: 408.549.9867
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.TheAudioArchive.com
Disc and Tape Audio Transfer Services and Preservation Consulting


-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Richard L. Hess
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 5:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Suggestions needed re: crashed disk drive recovery


First of all, sorry for the cross-posting...

I am beside myself. A non-profit heritage site
that I'm peripherally involved with has had a
disk crash and they then found out that their
backup system has not been working for three
years...although it was religiously taken off-site daily for three years!

I had nothing to do with it, but one person/firm
basically told them to forget about the
recovery—that they were likely to get only a few
percent at best--and if anything was retreived
they'd owe the full fee of $3000.

I'm hoping to have a meeting with some of the
people who know something about the system and
the problem right after Christmas and the key
piece of information I need to help them is a
short list of drive recovery vendors, especially in Canada.

I suspect that no one on these lists have had any
first-hand experience with the need for
this...you're all too careful about backups, and
that is fortunate!!! But maybe you helped someone with their laptop, etc.

I can do a Google search, but I'm hoping that
someone knows someone who has had data recovered
(or attempted it) from a crashed hard drive and
can provide an informed perspective about the
process before we dump kilobucks on it.

If you've had recovery from a crashed RAID set,
I'd like to hear about that as well, as I don't
think it's a RAID set, but it could be. The more
info I have going into this, the better.

It's probably better if you respond directly to
me at mailto:[log in to unmask] and I can
write a summary piece to post back--if you'd
prefer to be confidential, please let me know.

Thanks a lot and Happy Holidays!!!

Cheers,

Richard

Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
Aurora, Ontario, Canada       (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.